Quote from: S'mon;1028299These 'pretend to be kids' games often feel creepy to me (especially when discussed on rpgnet, creep central) and are definitely the opposite of what children want in an RPG. My son (10) loved Mentzer Red Box Basic D&D, he enjoys CRPGs like Skyrim and Fallout IV - and other power fantasy videogames I don't like (eg Just Cause, Shadow of Mordor) too. Feeling weak and helpless is the opposite of what children want in a game.

I am in S'monious agreement with both of these points. In fact, I'm glad someone else thinks the same about the 'pretend kids' games, as I thought it was ME who was being weird. There's no problem with kids wanting to play fantasy kids: Beyond the Wall does it brilliantly and I'm sure there are other examples. But the games I've seen discussed on TBP skew too psychosexual for me.

Overall, I think Disney is probably gun-shy over something that a) could splode like 5e and make them a ton of money or b) could turn out to be a satanic-panic scale PR boob. Also, they aren't exactly known for their "Yeah, just riff off our IPs for your fun, kids" approach to their business. Wasn't it the latest Marvel RPG that they refused to allow character generation in? So a Disney RPG might mean playing only Disney characters, which I'm sure has legs, but those sorts of RPGs historically haven't done so well, and I'm also sure Disney knows that.

Quote from: Gorilla_Zod;1028600Wasn't it the latest Marvel RPG that they refused to allow character generation in? So a Disney RPG might mean playing only Disney characters, which I'm sure has legs, but those sorts of RPGs historically haven't done so well, and I'm also sure Disney knows that.

Yeah, Disney is still weird about their IP. The Disney Infinity game which people mentioned was like that. If you were playing the Star Wars levels in that game, you could only use the Star Wars characters, despite the fact that all the characters in the game worked exactly the same. There was no technical reason you couldn't have Captain America and Tinkerbell fighting Darth Vader, it's just the Disney specifically forbid that from ever working.

With Disney Princesses however, Disney is a bit more flexible. Sophia the First is sort of a genre hopping show where Sofia visits all the other real princesses.

OTOH, I do think that the it needs to be an "RPG" considering the vast amounts of boardgames with character advancement in them currently available.

Quote from: Ulairi;1028562"No Thank You, Evil" I've seen at cons listed but never running at a full table. I looked at it and I don't think it's built for what kids actually want but what adults thinking they would like if they were children...if you get me o nthe difference.

Yup. I wrote a whole blog entry about that once. It's utterly and absolutely a bowdlerized sanitized delusion written by adults imagining what kids would enjoy.

Philip Pullman once pointed out that children generally hate being children. They're sick of it. They want to be (what they imagine it means to be) grown up. C. S. Lewis, who Pullman hates, once defined one of the Childish Things that St.Paul was talking about "putting away" obviously included that very 'desire to be very grown up'.

I'd add to this that kids beyond the youngest toddler ages generally hate adventures that are sanitized.  G-rated movies exist because parents want their kids to watch that; every kid desperately wants to watch movies with scary things and lots of violence. Even the girliest of girls (or the sissiest of sissy boys) can only stand so much saccharine cutesy-poo without it having some kind of subversive stuff mixed in.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;1028569Pundey's "4. end up being extremely popular with extremely creepy adult men? " sounds a little unlikely to me, but a 1% chance of it happening and a few articles and think-pieces doing -0.01% to their overall business would still probably dwarf any potential benefits.

Well, I didn't expect My Little Pony to be a huge hit with 20-something adult male virgins living in basements, but that's the world we live in.

Yeah, I'd give it a go just because of how iconic they are. Hell I just got (for free) the Planeshift:Equestra document for 5e that allows you to play in the My Little Pony world. It helps that I have a 9 year old daughter who loves D&D

Quote from: hedgehobbit;1028607Yeah, Disney is still weird about their IP. The Disney Infinity game which people mentioned was like that. If you were playing the Star Wars levels in that game, you could only use the Star Wars characters, despite the fact that all the characters in the game worked exactly the same. There was no technical reason you couldn't have Captain America and Tinkerbell fighting Darth Vader, it's just the Disney specifically forbid that from ever working.

With Disney Princesses however, Disney is a bit more flexible. Sophia the First is sort of a genre hopping show where Sofia visits all the other real princesses.

OTOH, I do think that the it needs to be an "RPG" considering the vast amounts of boardgames with character advancement in them currently available.

It makes perfect sense sales-wise:).
If you want to play a character in Disney Infinity, you have to buy a figure, and put it in a slot that you connect to your game. Want to explore the Star Wars parts of the game? Pay extra;).
If you've got kids, it pays to buy them a package deal with several figures. Just sharing personal experience here:D!

I would base it on some of the classic movies. I always thought that there's something to the dark/light mood and humor in Pinocchio that could be interesting to try in a game.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1028787Yup. I wrote a whole blog entry about that once. It's utterly and absolutely a bowdlerized sanitized delusion written by adults imagining what kids would enjoy.

Philip Pullman once pointed out that children generally hate being children. They're sick of it. They want to be (what they imagine it means to be) grown up. C. S. Lewis, who Pullman hates, once defined one of the Childish Things that St.Paul was talking about "putting away" obviously included that very 'desire to be very grown up'.

I'd add to this that kids beyond the youngest toddler ages generally hate adventures that are sanitized.  G-rated movies exist because parents want their kids to watch that; every kid desperately wants to watch movies with scary things and lots of violence. Even the girliest of girls (or the sissiest of sissy boys) can only stand so much saccharine cutesy-poo without it having some kind of subversive stuff mixed in.

Pundit's blog entry, and the hilarious reaction in comments - http://therpgpundit.blogspot.com/2016/02/a-note-on-rpgs-for-kids.html

Pullman & Lewis - ironically, Lewis' child characters do adult stuff like lead armies into battle, while Pullman's child characters get told what to do by nanny-state adults*. The ending of His Dark Materials was one of the most grotesque travesties I've ever read.

*But it's ok because they're on the side of Satan. No questioning Authority, as long as it's Satanic authority!

Yup, that was the blog entry I was talking about.

Quote from: S'mon;1028877The ending of His Dark Materials was one of the most grotesque travesties I've ever read.

Oh, you caught that, too? I saw a lot of people praising that series(which was quite good for the first 2 books, I admit), but almost nobody brought that up! When asked about what the 2 main characters -- both of whom had recently turned 13 in the books -- got up to on their own in that one chapter, he gave one of those "I'm not saying they did; and I'm not saying they didn't" non-answers. It was incredibly gross and soured me on the whole series.

Quote from: GeekEclectic;1029386Oh, you caught that, too? I saw a lot of people praising that series(which was quite good for the first 2 books, I admit), but almost nobody brought that up! When asked about what the 2 main characters -- both of whom had recently turned 13 in the books -- got up to on their own in that one chapter, he gave one of those "I'm not saying they did; and I'm not saying they didn't" non-answers. It was incredibly gross and soured me on the whole series.

Oh, for me the grotesque travesty wasn't the children canoodling (I assumed this wasn't actual sex, which I don't think is really implied), it was their unquestioned obedience to Satan and to Lyra's child-murdering father. I was raised on Michael Moorcock fantasy sagas where the message is Think For Yourself; whereas Pullman just wants to replace unquestioning obedience to Catholic Authority with unquestioning obedience to Marxist Authority.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1028787Yup. I wrote a whole blog entry about that once. It's utterly and absolutely a bowdlerized sanitized delusion written by adults imagining what kids would enjoy.

Philip Pullman once pointed out that children generally hate being children. They're sick of it. They want to be (what they imagine it means to be) grown up. C. S. Lewis, who Pullman hates, once defined one of the Childish Things that St.Paul was talking about "putting away" obviously included that very 'desire to be very grown up'.

I'd add to this that kids beyond the youngest toddler ages generally hate adventures that are sanitized.  G-rated movies exist because parents want their kids to watch that; every kid desperately wants to watch movies with scary things and lots of violence. Even the girliest of girls (or the sissiest of sissy boys) can only stand so much saccharine cutesy-poo without it having some kind of subversive stuff mixed in.

I've two daughters. Both are girly but one is way more girly than the other. They do like G movies. It isn't because that's what the parents want them to watch but they build the content for them. Girls tend to like pretty things (princesses) and like adventures around that. It's the twenty somethings in Brooklyn and Seattle that think the way to broaden products is to make the women fat, ugly, and manly.

If my daughter could have a game set in the Sofia the First world (which is a princess spanning property) and play a princess going on adventures and defeating monsters, she'd love it. She wouldn't want the princess to be in full body armor but a princess dress.

Disney will put their name on almost anything I think a big reason why we won't see a Disney RPG is that there isn't a channel to sell it in. Toys R Us is dead. Barns and Noble doesn't know how to sell RPGs and most LGS are places that are not run by people that think about making money and selling things.

Well, you have a point there. Up to a certain age, at least, little girls do like cutesy-poo pretty things. But even there, they still have an attitude of wanting to be grown up.  In a lot of the shows made for them, the girls in it are either a lot older than the target audience (JEM, for example, which my sister was obsessed with when she was a little girl), or they're somehow independent, and adults are either absent or incompetent.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1030134Well, you have a point there. Up to a certain age, at least, little girls do like cutesy-poo pretty things. But even there, they still have an attitude of wanting to be grown up.  In a lot of the shows made for them, the girls in it are either a lot older than the target audience (JEM, for example, which my sister was obsessed with when she was a little girl), or they're somehow independent, and adults are either absent or incompetent.

Girls like aspirational things just as much as boys. Instead of aspiring to be He-Man or a member of GI Joes they aspire the mirror image but around "pretty" or "real life" one of the big things I've noticed about kids is that girls tend to play and recreate "real life" much more than boys. Which is why I don't think we will ever see parity of the sexes in role-playing games. I don't think women are even going to be as interested in elf games as playing real life. It starts when they are little and it's a big reason even with video games that girls start to drop off as they start to mature. They get much more interested in real life than boys do.

But, I do think, a Disney game targeted to what little kids like (not what hipsters like or think they would like as kids) would do well. One of my biggest issues with kid content today is that it's written for people that never developed past the age of 12. They are making "kids" content for people their ages because they haven't grown up.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1028545In my experience, most kids don't want kids' games. That is, not games specifically made for kids.

At least, not after they get to the age where they'd actually be capable of playing in an RPG.

I sure didn't want to play TSR's "Kid game" offering when I was a kid (Fantasy Forest): I wanted Dungeon! at the very least.  AD&D though, that was my prime goal.